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Thursday, 25 June 2015

Seafood sausage with chablis - Yapp's Drinks on Us Challenge

I'm really excited about the recipe I am sharing today. It's really delicious, a bit unusual, very impressive-looking and not as difficult as I was anticipating.

Paul was playing with his camera

I was invited by Yapp Brothers, a wine merchant specialising in French wines, to take part in their Drinks on Us challenge. They asked about my wine preferences (...in a glass), sent me a bottle and asked me to devise the perfect accompaniment to the wine.

They chose a chablis for me, described as "classy, unoaked & supple, delightful with creamy fish or seafood dishes". Chablis tends to be quite fresh and acidic, so I wanted to make something that would highlight that acidity, without being so rich as to make the wine seem thin.

Very young garlic scapes

I decided to have a crack at a seafood sausage. A white fish mousseline with chunks of other seafood through it. I did a practice run on the mousseline and it was lovely - it reminded Paul of the pike boudin from the dearly departed Le Cafe Anglais - but he thought there should be something green and fresh in the mixture. Fortunately a few garlic scapes had appeared on our garlic plants in time to come to the party.

If you don't want to do the extra fiddle of making the sausages, I fried spoonfuls of the mixture to test the seasoning and they were very tasty too, so you could make fishcakes instead. Or put it in buttered ramekins or a terrine and cook it in a waterbath. But do have a go - the delicate, sweet seafood with the slight hint of garlic from the scapes is just the thing with a crisp white wine. And it makes a sausage elegant enough to be served anywhere.

Make space in your fridge. This all needs to be kept quite well chilled, so keep everything in the fridge until the last minute and between steps put the bowls back in the fridge.

In a food processor, pulse the white fish and eggwhites together until smooth. Gradually add the cream and blend until white, fluffy and quite firm. Refrigerate.

Chop the other seafood into small pieces. My sausage stuffer has a little spinning disc bit in it and the holes in the disc are just over 1cm wide - so the bits had to be smaller than that so they could get through the tube. Put the garlic scapes into a sieve over the sink and pour over a kettle full of boiling water. Drain, pat dry and finely slice.

Fold the fish mousseline mixture into the garlic scapes and other seafood. Season with salt and white pepper, cover and chill for an hour.

Feed the sausage casings onto the stuffing tube. A little cream may have oozed out of the filling while it's been chilling, so fold it back in. Fill the sausage skins, twisting to form links, and knot at both ends. Chill the sausages again for at least another hour before cooking. Fry very gently in a little oil until well browned on all sides. We had them with green beans and sugar snap peas, and a little beurre blanc. And of course, a glass of chablis.

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